I recently sewed what I think is my favorite baby blanket yet… I am long-term subbing for an English teacher who has just started her family with a bouncing new baby boy. I thought the best way to thank her for asking me to sub (and providing me with nearly 4 months of steady income) was to make a baby blanket for her little one.
I scouted out an adorable line of fabric by Riley Blake called “All Stars” (I purchased a 10 yard bundle here). I am IN LOVE with this fabric. So is Chuck. I’ve saved the scraps in hopes that I can use them in a quilt for a little boy of our own some day.
I got my inspiration from a quilt featured on the Moda Bake Shop website.
Their quilt looks like this:
Here’s what I came up with:
(Sorry for the blurry picture…it looked clear on the camera screen)
I used Heat-n-Bond to hold the appliquéd letters in place, then hand-sewed them on with a a tight whip stitch using matching embroidery floss. I can’t sew with a thimble on, so I actually ended up creating a deep hole in the tip of my middle finger from all of the hand stitching. I’m SO GLAD I machine-quilt and don’t hand-quilt. I love the look of hand quilting, and truly appreciate the hard work real quilters put into their work, but man-oh-man, I don’t believe I will ever hand-quilt anything in my life.
I really love the All Star prints – my favorite is the small dots with stars, which I used for the backing. My second favorite is the star print. I love the colors and the design. It’s simple and very “boyish”, I think.
Here’s a look at all of the prints together:
I’m so proud of my mitered corners. I think if it weren’t for easy tutorials online, I might have never mastered this, but thanks to the internet, I got the hang of these early on. I always love the finished look of a nicely mitered corner.
And again, a look at the final product. It’s larger than a crib-sized quilt, but smaller than a twin. Here Chuck is holding it up, so I’m guessing it’s roughly 6 feet by 3.5 or 4 feet. I think what makes me like this quilt so much are both the fabrics I used and knowing that I put a lot of work into this one – although it’s a simple design, I spent a little time on it every night for a couple weeks, hand sewing the letters on and then spent two nights perfecting my blind-stitch to finish the binding by hand. I was super proud of my blind stitch – it was the first time I’d used it and it looked professional! I was really annoyed that I didn’t put a label on this one – I didn’t want to embroider one (because my fingers were already so sore) and my printer is broken, so I couldn’t even crank out an iron-on label. I think I’m going to actually order some printed twill tape with my name on it to use as labels in the future.
Ta-Da!!!
Another masterpiece, I know how much time you put into this. That is one lucky baby!
That is an absolutely amazing creation!